


Tonight, We're Alive

by arwhal



Category: The Last of Us, zombie - Fandom, zombies - Fandom
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen, Horror, Scary, Suspense, Zombie, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-17 23:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arwhal/pseuds/arwhal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After finding a strange old book telling of a zombie apocalypse, Leslie Chapman thinks nothing of it. Until it really happens. Four years after finding the book, Leslie is trapped a decaying world with her little sister, Clara, and the only thought that now runs through their minds is surviving this hellish world with their newly formed alliance that consists of four brothers and their mom. Together, the seven of them must fight the living dead in order to try to survive and find a cure to end this madness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

It all started with that book. It was the only book in the old Victorian styled bookcase that was still intact. I still wonder why the antique store had even bothered to put the other ones there. The book was a thick, leather bound book that had a lock across it to keep it closed. The store owner said she didn't have the lock and that the original owner hadn't sold it to her with a key, and that the book was only twenty-five cents. I figured I could maybe burn off the lock, and I had bought it.

Yet to my horror, I found a little gold key on the floor of my car just as I slid into the drivers seat. A little gold key that matched the gold paint that covered the little lock. Yet, like most naive seventeen year old girls, I convinced myself that it had just fallen out of the book, even though the book was still in the bag.

Driving all the way home, I thought nothing of it. I didn't find anything suspicious with the book, even when I got home and unlocked it. Even when I read the book and it had my name written in it, clear as day, I still thought nothing was weird. Even when it informed me that a zombie Apocalypse was approaching, I still found it normal.

I still don't know what was wrong with me four years ago, but even if I realized that something was wrong with it, there was still nothing that I could do to prevent the future events.


	2. Flashback: The First Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's first night of realizing the Apocalypse and the Chapman family has to escape as quickly as possible.

There was a loud gunshot that echoed throughout our gated community's neighbourhood, which woke me up immediately. I had never heard a gunshot so close to me in my entire life. I quickly looked out of my window to see a man with a shotgun running down the street screaming. My little sister, Clara, ran into my room.

"Leslie, did you see him?!" she was crying and was holding on to her teddy bear tightly. I sat her down in my lap and stroked her long brown hair. She was only six years old, and I wished that she hadn't had to hear a gunshot so close to our house.

"It's okay," I whispered to her, though I desperately wanted to know what was going on outside. "We'll just stay inside where it's safe." I eyed the book I had bought from the antique store several months ago. It sat on my nightstand, locked shut so Clara couldn't read it. I kept the key on a chain around my neck at all times. I couldn't risk her having nightmares. At that moment, our mother ran into my room. She smoothed her nightgown down and smiled at me.

"Leslie, may I talk to you in private?" I nodded and laid Clara in my bed so she could try to sleep. I softly closed the door behind me and looked at my mother.

"Leslie, we need to go."

"What? What's going on?"

"There was a chemical leak in the city and it's infecting thousands of people. We need to leave before it comes here."

"Well, what, is it killing people?"

"In a way, yes."

"What do you mean in-" She cut me off and quickly opened the door, which startled Clara awake.

"Honey, we need to go." Clara rubbed her eyes sleepily.

"Why?"

"Uhm," my mother nervously thought of an excuse.

"We're visiting papaw!" I said quickly. 

"I wanna see papaw!" Clara squealed happily. My mom gave me a thankful half-smile and picked Clara up.

"I'm going to put you in the car and I"ll pack your things, okay?" As my mom took her to the car, I quickly packed up my essential things: clothes, shoes, toothbrush, hairbrush, my phone and its charger, reading glasses and that creepy old book. I zipped up my duffel bag and quickly ran down the stairs to the car. My mother had already packed my little sister and my father was working on packing the two of them up. My mother packed the clothes while my father packed all of his guns.

"Daddy," I didn't take my eyes off of the guns. He hadn't touched them in years. "Why are you taking those?" He looked at me sadly.

"We might need them."

The three of us threw the bags into the back of the minivan and piled ourselves in. Dad opened the garage door and pulled out onto the street. I looked out of my window, still half asleep, looking at our little neighbourhood. Every house was designed and coloured the same. It was the rule here. You couldn't change it. Consistency was the number one thing my parents cared about. there was a fifteen foot space between each house, and in between one of the houses, I thought I saw somebody run across. I shook my head, convinced I was dreaming. My dad began to pull out of the gate and onto the road towards the highway when we all saw the huge line of traffic going out the same way.

"Looks like everyone had the same idea." he sighed.

"Wait," my mom said, looking off to the left. "Do you hear that?" There was screaming. Not just a little scream, but a continuous, blood-curdling scream. People in the same direction began getting out of their cars and running off to the right. Behind them was a man running after all of them. He looked like a person you would see from an asylum. My father put both of his hands on the wheel.

"Hold on tight," he said loudly. He floored the gas and hit the crazed looking man, bashing his head into the front bumper of the car. Clara and I hung our mouths open wide, unable to react. My dad then backed up and drove straight past a bunch of cars down the highway. My mother didn't seem too shocked, but she nervously pulled at the end of her nightgown.

"Excuse me," I said loudly. "But what the hell was that?!" My father concentrated on the road.

"That chemical leak didn't just kill people, Leslie," his voice was soft, yet stern. "It kill their minds and souls, but left their bodies alive."

"Are you telling me that they're a literal living dead?"

"Yes," he kept glancing up into his rear-view mirror. "Zombies, if you will. That's why we need to leave, because a single bite from them will infect you." I looked behind me to see three of these zombies running towards us. I quickly looked at how fast my dad was going. He was going eighty miles per hour. These people were running at eighty miles per hour. I stared into my lap and tried to slow my breathing.

We reached the end of the highway, all that was left was a hill to drive over to get to the road going out to the country, but to our horror, the entire road was blocked off. It wasn't blocked off by police tape or anything, but by cars. Hundreds and thousands of cars were left abandoned, most of which were still running. There was a person on top of a truck eating and tearing the arms off of another person. I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat. My dad quickly shut the car off.

"Maybe if we're quiet, he'll leave and we can run past it to the other side," he unbuckled his seat belt and slide down in his seat. "We can find a running car near the end of this pile-up and continue on to the country. My mother unbuckled her seat belt and slide down into her seat, and I copied. Clara was crying quietly in her car seat, and I unbuckled her and set her down at my feet. The car grew hot and humid from the lack of air conditioning and our sweaty bodies in such close quarters. My dad quietly cracked his window open, letting in the crisp spring air. He sighed.

As soon as he sighed, the zombie man looked up from eating and directly at my father. We all held our breaths. Then, the man ran straight at us.

"What do we do?!" My mother screamed. My dad looked all around him, thinking of a solution.

"Brace for impact, don't let him bite you!" The man threw himself at our window and smashed through. My mother screamed, my sister cried, and I could hear the deafening sounds of my father punching the man.

"Leslie," my father shouted at he held the man back by the shoulders to prevent him from biting him, "Grab Clara and run!" He looked at my mother. "Make sure they're okay. Grab my guns and run as far as you can. I'll meet up with you later." My mother was too stunned to move.

"MOM!" I screamed and she flung her self out of the car. I quickly handed Clara to her and grabbed the bag full of dad's guns. I pulled one out, and handed it to my dad. He quickly grabbed it and shot the zombie in the head. We all sat there panting and my father looked at me.

"Thank you," he kicked his drivers side door open. "No time to waste. Let's run." My father ran as fast as he could toward the cars in the front of the pile up. My mother carried hers and Clara's bag while I carried mine. We can as fast as our legs could carry us, with only the light of the waning moon to light our way. In the distance, we could hear animalistic gurgles emerge from the throats of what were once normal functioning human beings. Around twenty minutes later, we reached the end of the pile up and found a running car that still had a good amount of gas left.

My father quickly got into the drivers seat and buckled himself in, and my mother soon followed him. Clara and I sat in the back with our bags, and he sped off. It was a three hour drive to papaw's house, which means that we would be there at around seven in the morning. There were fewer abandoned cars the father out we got, which was bad luck for us because we ran out of gas after only one hour of driving. The car slowly rolled to a stop in the middle of the road.

"Well," my father said, flinging the bag of guns onto his back. "Guess we either have to walk it or find another car." We all got out with our bags and started walking down the road. I looked over at the horizon that was already turning pink from a beginning sunset. Then, we found a truck. It still had gas and keys inside of it.

"Well aren't we lucky?" My mom smiled. 

"You two can stay in the bed of the truck and keep a lookout for anymore of those things." We nodded and got into the bed of the truck. My dad, once again, got into the drivers seat and my mom in the passenger's seat. We heard the truck start up, and I glanced inside of the truck through the back window. My dad gave me a thumbs up, and I did the same to him. I saw a smile flash across his face in the rear-view mirror and I smiled, too.

But, arising from the back seat of the truck, a woman sat up. My dad glanced back and my mother screamed. I saw the woman press herself on my father and she tore a chunk of his neck off. My mother wailed and pulled at the door handle, but it broke off into her hands. I screamed for my father, even though his eyes had already rolled into the back of his head and blood was pouring out from the side of his neck. My mother screamed for us to run, and I didn't see what happened to her. My vision was blurred with tears. I mindlessly grabbed the gun bag, my bag of clothes and Clara's bag, and flung Clara on my back and ran down the road.

Her arms were wrapped around my neck and I could feel her tears fall down my neck. I couldn't comfort her now. I had to get us to safety. I glanced back at the truck and I could see my mother's body half inside the truck and half out of the window. The crazed woman clawed at the window, trying to get out. I held back the tears and kept running.

It was at that moment that I learned the true difference between zombies and regular humans. It wasn't just that they made animal noises or that they literally looked like they were about to eat you. It was something more internal. Fresh zombies had a physical appearance of a human, but because they lacked a living soul and free will, their movements were almost robotic. Their faces were emotionless unless they sensed food, then their faces became more animated. Lastly, the most distinctive part of them was that they decayed so quickly. Rotten flesh hung off of them, revealing once strong bones. At first, it was enough to make me sick. Now, it just built up more anger.


	3. Flashback: The First and Second Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two years have gone by since their parents death, but Clara and Leslie still stay as optimistic as they possibly can. They eventually find their Papaw and even make a few friends,

I don't really remember much about anything that happened the week after mom and dad died. Everything went by in a blur, and I tried to not think about them, and Clara did the same. We had eventually reached papaw's house and we welcomed us with open arms. I had been the one to tell him about mom and dad, and he said he would protect us to the best of his ability. He was seventy-nine years old, so it wasn't saying much. Clara and I helped to protect the house as much as we could.

We set up an electric fence around his farm, set up a trap by the barn so the animals couldn't get infected, and even started gardening for food. Our grandmother had passed away several years ago, so it was just me, Clara, Papaw, his two cows, three sheep, horse named Samuel, and his sheep herding dog, Grover. We lived comfortably, living off of the fruits and vegetables growing in his garden and occasionally eating meats he had saved in the freezer in the cellar. It wasn't until Christmas that things started going bad.

It was Christmas Eve, but neither Papaw or I told Clara that. We obviously couldn't get her any presents and we couldn't tell her that Santa had become infected, too, so we just never mentioned it. It was snowing pretty bad, and we were running low on wood, so I decided to go out into the woods by the house and get some. I then learned that zombies aren't effected by the cold. It was a grown man, with blue lips and his face half torn off. It was a more intelligent zombie, who wasn't fooled by our electric fence and began to circle around it, his good eye staring at the house with the other one hanging loosely out of its socket.

I called him Harvey Dent.

The snow storm had started on Christmas. It was a week later, and the storm still wouldn't let up. Eventually, the box that kept the electric fence on couldn't take the cold and the wet snow and stopped working. Once Harvey Dent realized that, he hopped it and ran straight for the house. Papaw then told us that he had served in the military once, and he could handle some "undead scum." Sadly, Papaw forgot he was seventy-nine, and the zombie didn't hesitate to take him down and bite him. I had shot a bullet through his head before he could do any serious damage, but the most fatal damage had already been done.

Clara and I then had to pack up all of our stuff, because neither of us had the heart to shoot him in the head and we weren't in the mood to let our undead grandfather eat us alive. We figured that we would take his old pickup truck and drive over to the nearest city, wherever that was. We first attached the horse trailer on the back of it and ushered Samuel inside. Gas couldn't last forever in conditions like this.

We brought all of his equipment and medical supplies and headed off. It was a long five hour drive, with my little sister complaining all the way about Samuel's poop smell, but it was worth it in a way. In the city, there were buildings collapsing right before our eyes. Skyscrapers were toppled over one another and fifty story buildings were broken and leaning on one another. Abandoned cars littered the streets and police tape was everywhere.

Apparently, the last remaining officials of the city had banned together and began to make a set list of rules and even started a food pantry. The biggest rule in the city was that you could not be outside of a building after dark or you were shot and killed on the spot. Up until the next spring, Clara, Samuel and I lived dull lives in an abandoned apartment. It was then that we met Daniel.

I was at the food pantry in town, getting Clara some chicken noodle soup for her minor cold when a boy, around my age, started talking to me.

"Hey," he eyed me closely. "I've never seen you around here. Are you new?"

"No," I kept my eyes on the food pantry working and then onto my sister's soup. I didn't like making eye contact. "I've lived here for five months now."

"Then why have you never come here?"

"I never needed to."

"Then why are you here now?" I looked up at him and glared.

"My little sister is sick. Now will you leave me alone?" His ice blue eyes seemed to pierce straight through me.

"Hey," he smiled apologetically. "I didn't mean to pry. I was just too curious. I'm sorry."

"It's fine. I'm still a bit uptight about everything that's going on."

"Yeah, my mom is the same way."

"You still have your mom?!"

"Yeah, my mom had me and my brothers when she was really young, and my father left her. So I'm eighteen and she's thirty-five." He smirked.

"Wow," I said with a sigh. "You're all lucky."

"Yeah..." He put a hand on my shoulder. "I'm so sorry you lost your parents. If you want, I could probably help you out with your little sister."

"Wouldn't it be strange to let a stranger into 'my' apartment?" He laughed.

"I'm Daniel."

"Leslie." I smirked. "The apartment is this way." It was only a five minute walk and we passed the time by talking. Him, his two brothers and his mother lived on the opposite side of the food pantry, so it was a short distance. We walked inside to see Clara coughing on the old stained couch and our horse on the opposite couch snoring.

"Is that a horse..?!"

"What? Never seen a horse in an apartment before?" Daniel laughed whole-heartily and sat on the floor by Samuel. I carefully handed Clara the soup.

"Who's this guy?" she crinkled up her nose to Daniel.

"This is Daniel. Don't worry, he's okay."

From that point on, Daniel and I had become close friends and it wasn't until two months later that he introduced Clara and I to his two brothers and his mother. His brothers, Draven and Sam, we're twins that were only ten and his mother, Martha, looked around twenty-one. We all worked well together, so well that we all began living together.

We helped each other out by finding food, keeping our shelter zombie-proof and finding medicine when any of us were sick. Every weekend, we walked thirty minutes to the woods and practiced shooting and using knives. I became a melee expert in our group and my little now-seven-year-old sister became too comfortable with a gun.

Sometimes, it was nice remembering the past; when we first met. Now it's been four years since the beginning of this hell, and it's been three years with this small group. We're still holding onto our lives and still optimistic about finding a cure.


End file.
